Strategies for Enhancing Family Physician Programs with Medical Librarian Information Partnership: A Policy Brief

Abstract

This policy brief was developed based on the findings of a qualitative study that aimed to identify collaboration strategies between medical librarians and family physicians to advance the goals of the family physician program in Iran. The findings indicate that family physicians often have less timely and effective access to reliable and up-to-date health information due to the high volume and sensitivity of clinical work and time constraints. This can negatively impact the quality of clinical decision-making, effective patient education, and community health outcomes. On the other hand, medical librarians, as experts in retrieving, evaluating, and organizing information, have the capacity to respond to information problems and needs in the clinical setting. Based on the analysis of expert perspectives, four main areas for medical librarians’ information partnership in the clinical setting were identified, including helping to enhance physicians’ professional knowledge and scientific mastery, improving research methodology, promoting information literacy, and providing appropriate content for information resources for patient education. On this basis, four policy strategies were designed and presented in consultation and participation of relevant experts to operationalize this collaboration, including “developing and implementing joint policy and formalizing the role of librarians”, “providing specialized information services and supporting clinical decision-making”, “producing and disseminating reliable and understandable educational content for patients”, and “actively participating in clinical and applied research related to primary care”. By providing an analysis of stakeholders, implementation barriers and facilitating measures, this document provided practical guidance for policymakers, administrators of medical universities and family physician program officials so that by taking advantage of strategic collaboration, these goals, including the realization of evidence-based health, equity in access to information and improving the quality of services at the first level of the health system, become more achievable. © 2026, null. All rights reserved.